Church Grim

~ 2013 ~

What follows is a work of fiction, but it's inspired by... something
else. In 2011, an unnamed blogger began writing about The
Black Dog of Saint Paul, a local legend that no one had
ever heard. The blogger had received a box full of "evidence" from an
unreliable source and wrote about what they found as they catalogued its
contents: spirit photos, newspaper clippings, maps of Black Dog
sightings, police reports, even a couple of videos.

The blogger didn't treat the topic with any seriousness, not until the
Dog invaded their life. The story had supposedly been covered up by a
cult called "The Laity," which worshipped the Black Dog and used it to
terrorize its enemies. They had influence over the police, the courts,
and City Hall. Depending on who you asked, they'd either been around for
over a hundred years or they began in 1967 with a cop and crazy woman.

The myth itself begins in 1845, back when Saint Paul was a frontier
outpost called Pig's Eye. A Norwegian congregation, following some
obscure tradition, buried a dog alive beneath the foundation
of their church. They believed the dog's spirit, called a "church grim,"
would protect the church and its faithful. Things didn't exactly work
out that way.

The following winter, the Church Grim's nightly braying scared away all
the small game. The Norwegians, desperate to avoid starvation, decided
to punish the Grim by proxy. Each day, they tied up a dog in the
churchyard and beat it to death. On the seventh day, just as the first
blow was struck, the Grim appeared before them. It herded the men away
from their victim, then tore out the mongrel's throat. The Black Dog
howled no more and the Laity never again harmed a dog, not in the
churchyard nor anywhere else.

Real or not, I thought it was a great story and it inspired me to write
some stories of my own.